


guerrerito

by AggressivelyBisexual



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game), Life Is Strange 2 (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Characters to be added, Family Feels, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Panic Attacks, The Esteban We Deserved More Of, Trans Male Character, minor dysphoria
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-12
Updated: 2019-07-12
Packaged: 2020-06-26 17:28:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19773019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AggressivelyBisexual/pseuds/AggressivelyBisexual
Summary: little warriorWith their dad gone, Sean is forced to grow up too quickly. So, he passes the name on to Daniel.“The little one always saves the day,” Sean whispers into Daniel’s hair. “Nuestro guerrerito.”





	1. State Route 7, Washington

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TotallynotRemus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TotallynotRemus/gifts).



> This story follows canon events up until the day that Sean and Daniel get fired from Merrill’s, diverging right before that point.
> 
> This is about a trans boy trying to navigate his world after it’s been uprooted and everything is gone. 
> 
> Content warnings in the end notes  
>   
> 

Sean knows that his phone is minutes away from dying, but the first line in the text notification from an unknown number has him unlocking it with numb, shaking fingers.

  


* * *

Sean, this is Dr. Takemoto. I would’ve sent you an email and I know I shouldn’t take your cell number off of your chart but I needed to reach you fast. I just hope and pray that this will.

I don’t know where you and your brother have gone.. The news says you boys are on the run and I’m worried about where you’re going and when you’ll return.

Your Supprelin implant will have run its course in a couple months and need to be removed so you can start your testosterone injections. Your appointment is still on Jan. 25th and I won’t cancel it under any circumstances. I have to have faith that you’ll be back home by then.

Please Sean, make it back home.

You know that if we don’t start your testosterone after the hormone blocker is gone, your body will start to go through puberty in the wrong direction. And I’m worried about what that stress and anxiety could do. Please contact me. I’m here to help you and only want to see you safe and healthy.

I’m so sorry about your father. You have this office’s deepest condolences and we miss Esteban dearly.

I hope you and Daniel are safe and on your way home. Please come home.

* * *

  


“Finally,” Daniel’s crows from ahead, distantly filtering through the static in Sean’s brain.

He stares at his phone for a few more seconds before the screen flashes with the empty battery symbol and then blinks off. Sean’s warped expression stares back at him from the dark glass, both of them brittle and fragile things. He takes a deep breath and pockets his phone. When he looks up, he finds Daniel running towards the gas station that they'd been trekking all day to reach.

“Hey, wait for me, _enano_.”

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (If you can’t read the text messages, click “Hide Creator’s Style” at the top)
> 
>  **Future content warnings:** conversations about name changes and deadnames, anxiety and panic attacks, transphobic grandparents. Beyond referring to deadnames, there is no misgendering of any kind in this fic. Other warnings to be added with later chapters.
> 
> This story is very important to me as a trans writer who isn’t out, and I wished I had these childhood experiences that Sean has here. Since I’ve never transitioned ftm, especially as a kid, some things might not be like others’ real life experiences. But, I write what I wish to see in the/my world and what I see in my favorite characters. The Diaz family’s story is really special to me in every form in takes.
> 
> ♡ Thanks for reading ♡


	2. 2007-2016

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _little warrior(s)_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings in the end notes  
> 

  


###### 

## 12

For Sean, Friday afternoons mean walking Daniel down the street to Noah’s house for their weekly playdate, then dragging his feet back home and to the garage as slowly as he can get away with.

“Seanie-boy! We need some music down here. Can you find the Manu Chao CD?”

Sean groans. “Really, Dad? That one?” 

“Aw, come on, hijo. I know you secretly love him too. I’ve heard you singing along.” 

“I don’t sing along.” 

“ _Mentiroso_.” His dad smirks at him from the ground. 

“Shut up, I’m serious. Here.” Sean puts the disc into the stereo, more aggressively than it probably deserves. 

Sean will never admit it, with his head nodding to the beat as he's silently lip-syncing what Esteban sings very poorly— _me gusta correr, me gustas tú_ —but, he only likes these songs when his dad is the one singing and ruining them.

“Alright,” Esteban says from underneath the car, “Now slide under here with me. Look at this and tell me what’s wrong.” 

Sean sighs, rolling his board under the car and squeezing in next to his dad. He looks up at the twisting maze of the car’s underside for a short while, long enough that his dad looks over at him and starts studying Sean more than the engine. 

“Need any help?” Esteban asks. 

“No, I can do it.” 

Esteban eventually points over to the area that Sean is supposed to be looking in, and he only takes another minute to spot the problem. 

“So, what tool do we need to fix it?”

“A reversible flex head,” Sean replies.

“What size?” 

“Um…” Sean racks his brain, struggling to remember. 

Esteban answers before Sean has time to feel any more frustrated with himself. “Sixteen millimeter. Come on, roll out with me.” 

Sean uses the bottom of the car to push himself out, then follows his dad over to the work bench where he’s just leaning against it and not looking for the wrench. 

“Mijo,” Esteban says gently, but firmly. “Do you actually want to be down here with me, learning to fix cars?”

“Yeah, of course.”

Esteban regards him seriously, the same studying expression as before.

Sean continues, “I need to know how to do this stuff, right? And I don’t know, sometimes it’s fun hanging out… when you play better music at least.”

“I still know you’re lying.” 

“I’m _not_ , the music you listen to is so old—” 

Esteban cuts him off. “Okay, first thing. That album came out after you were born, so it’s not as old as you. But second, I wasn’t talking about the music.” 

Sean goes silent, his heartbeat suddenly louder, a painful drumming in his stomach.

“Why are you pretending you like working on cars? Did I make you feel like you have to? Because you don’t, and I’m sorry if I ever pushed it on you, really.”

“No, Dad, you never have, I promise. I _want_ to learn…” Sean trails off and says more quietly, “You know, be like you.” 

Esteban leans forward and holds both of Sean’s shoulders, hands strong and warm. “Sean, you got nothing to prove. You don’t need to force yourself to do something. Just because the world says there’s things that boys are _supposed_ to do—which isn’t true—it doesn’t mean you have to make yourself like them, too. Am I hitting the right thing here?”

Sean’s face burns, shame and embarrassment rising up behind his stinging eyes. He wants to respond and defend himself, but the hard lump forming in his throat blocks the words.

His dad continues, “There’s so much you can do, so many things you can be, and only you get to choose, no one else.” He cups the side of Sean’s face, thumb catching the escaped tears rolling down his cheek. With a small, lopsided smile, he gently shakes Sean’s shoulder with his other hand. “Except me, maybe. No choosing to be a bull fighter or wrestler or anything, you hear me?”

Sean hiccups a small laugh. Emotionally wrung out and without any defensive resistance, he lets his dad pull him into a hug.

“Te quiero, hijo.”

“Love you too.”

  


* * *

  


A few months later, Esteban comes home to find Sean and Lyla clumsily skateboarding in the driveway. 

He looks at Sean disapprovingly. “When I said you could do anything you wanted, I didn’t mean something dangerous.” 

Sean shrugs. “Well it’s not bull fighting.”

Sighing deeply, his dad just shakes his head and goes inside.  
  
  
  


###### 

## 13

On a cold, quiet November evening, Sean stays curled into the corner of the couch after Esteban puts Daniel to bed. He can’t even contemplate getting up, his bones sinking through him and into the cushions, a dead weight deep in his core. An insurmountable exhaustion. 

Sean’s session with his psychologist earlier wasn’t one of their better ones. 

He still aches all over from the tension of muscles locked too tightly, having tried in vain to hold him together as he shook out of his skin. His bruised lungs still weak, still struggling to catch a proper breath after being held underneath hyperventilating waves. Sean keeps his hands curled in tight to his stomach, grounding himself by pushing his knuckles hard into his skin, trying to dispel the lingering feeling of his palms clamped tight over his mouth to muffle his sobs, trying so hard to keep the attack in his psychologist’s office and away from his waiting dad. 

It didn’t matter in the end, an unnecessary endeavor that did nothing but give him more ways to hurt himself. As soon as he walked out of the office, Esteban’s face had immediately dropped. He reached a hand out, but stopped when Sean cringed slightly away. It was too much, the lights too bright and the voices too loud, the heat from his dad’s concern too stifling, the crawling under his skin too nauseating. 

_Everything is too much_.

Now on the couch, Esteban comes back and settles onto the other side of it. He looks over at Sean but doesn’t say anything, doesn’t ask any of the questions that Sean knows he couldn’t answer even if he tried to. 

But, Sean surprises both of them by opening his mouth first. 

“Did you always know?” 

“Know what?” Esteban asks, too lightly. 

Sean hesitates, biting his lip and chewing on his words. 

“That, I was different.” 

“You’re not _different_ , mijo. You’re just you. Sean.”

“But.” He carves through the line between poisonous insecurity and weary defensiveness. “I wasn’t always Sean.” 

“Yes, you always were. No matter what your name was when you were born.” His tone then gentles, asking, “Where’s this coming from?”

Sean stays silent for a moment, staring down at the bit of collarbone showing above his dad’s shirt, away from his eyes. 

“You know that…it’s almost five years since, the date coming up…” 

“Yeah, I know,” Esteban says shortly. 

He falls silent again.

“Sean, I’ve told you before, your mother didn’t leave because of that. Not because of you.” 

“You don’t know that,” Sean snaps. 

“ _Yes_ , I do know that.” 

The screaming thoughts that have been building in his head all day roar louder. Things that his dad doesn’t know, memories Sean that has never shared, always trapped and snarling in the darkest shadows of his mind. 

“You were always an anxious one,” his dad starts, quieter, softer. “You hated your dresses, threw the worst fits when we made you wear one. You threw a lot of fits about a lot of things I never understood. One day I found you with scissors cutting your hair in the bathroom. We took away your toys for a few days, you remember?” Sean nods silently, stilled. “But you didn’t cry or throw any fits. You didn’t even care you were in trouble. The look on your face… I gave you your toys back early, Karen said it’d be a week without them, always said I was too easy on you. And then when I asked if you wanted me to fix your hair?” 

Esteban chuckles quietly. “You looked a mouse stuck a fork in an outlet, your hair all sticking up in crazy directions. So I fixed your hair, cut it shorter and as tidy as I could get it. The look on your face, mijo… I knew then. You weren’t the baby we thought we had—” Sean feels his face contort painfully, but his dad is quick to reach a hand out and warmly clasp his shoulder. “—I don’t mean that bad. I just mean that the kid I have now is not who we were prepared for when you were born. But I _love you,_ Sean, _mi guerrerito._ I love my boys.”

Sean inhales shakily, eyes burning.

“I don’t think Mom loved me.” 

Esteban is quiet for a long time. Sean expects him to argue that of course she loved him, argue how he used to when Sean was younger and didn’t try to hold his tears back as strongly as he tries to now.

Finally, so quietly that Sean could almost miss it if the world around them wasn’t so delicately hushed, he says, “I don’t think she loved any of us.” 

Sean stares at him, stunned. The last thing he ever expected to hear. 

But Esteban is looking at the rings stained into the table instead, hand sliding loosely off of Sean’s shoulder. Sean feels the spaces in his brain rearranging, shifting and slotting into new places. His dad isn’t curled up and hiding in the corner of the couch cushions like Sean is, but the hunched slope of his shoulders, the tired lines around his eyes, his knuckles white from where he clenches his hands. A mask of a different make.

“Dad…” Sean whispers. 

Feeling younger than Daniel, younger than Sean ever remembers himself feeling, he crawls forward and takes his dad’s arm. He maneuvers it around himself and moves into the open space to squeeze tightly into his dad’s side. Sean feels all of the air expel out of Esteban’s lungs more than he hears it, and his dad’s arm tightens around him. 

“We don’t need her.” Sean grits his teeth against the anger always simmering deep in his chest, always ready to boil over. 

“We do.” His dad sighs. “We do need her. At least for Daniel’s sake, he needs her the most.”

Sean wants to argue, wants to fight the futility of his dad’s beliefs, but the air around them is already fragile. Enough bombs have been dropped on Sean tonight, he needs more time to pick up the pieces before starting another round. 

After a moment, Esteban’s head finally turns to look down at him. “But I promise. I _promise you_ , mijo. She did not leave because of you.”

The anger bubbles high again, getting harder to keep down and locked behind that door inside him. “But she left right after we started at the gender clinic, and when you put the papers in to change my name.” 

“That was just timing. We don’t know how long she’d been wanting to, you were too young to see the signs that I was ignoring.”

 _I do know,_ Sean wants to say again. 

“You need to let this go eventually, we all do,” his dad says.

“Then why do you keep her stuff around?”

“For Daniel, mostly,” Esteban says slowly, “But also, I guess I don’t really know how to let go and move on either.”

“Then why’re you telling me to?” 

“Because you can’t keep the blame on you, Sean. This weight on your shoulders will get too heavy to carry.”

“Do you keep the blame on you, too?”

Esteban doesn’t answer his question. “I shouldn’t have brought this up, hijo. I’m sorry. You’re too young to deal with all this.” Before Sean has time to get defensive over the age comment, his dad squeezes his arm tighter around him. “You’re too young to carry everything. Let your big, strong papito take care of you boys, okay?”

“Okay,” Sean says, knowing without a single doubt that it’s not okay. He has no control over letting go of the guilt and blame. He knows it’s still his fault.

Sometimes he thinks his dad can read his mind, as he looks down at Sean skeptically. 

“I don’t regret anything. Even if I could, I wouldn’t go back to change a single thing. Watching you grow up, maybe you’re still that anxious baby—” He chuckles again at Sean’s offended expression. “—but you are who you were always meant to be. I thank God everyday for you.”

“Okay, I get it,” Sean mumbles, embarrassed and fidgety with the returning feeling of _too much._

Esteban gives him a gentle shake. “Come on, it’s past our bedtimes. I’m tired and ready to sleep.” 

Sean feels like he could potentially sleep forever if only his wired thoughts would stop spinning in a frenzied spiral for just one night. 

“Is it okay if I stay out here and watch TV for a little longer?” he asks. 

“Sure, just keep the volume low, okay?” Esteban stands up and presses a kiss to the top of Sean’s head as he walks around the couch. “Goodnight, hijo.” 

“‘Night, Dad.” 

Sean eventually finds himself falling asleep to Top Gear reruns, pretending that the quiet growling of car engines is what’s responsible for the tension shaking him from the inside out. The rumbling fear that one day he’ll just tear in half before he ever gets the chance to feel whole.  
  
  
  


###### 

## 6

“Are you not hungry, Isa?” Esteban asks him as he silently frowns down at his untouched dinner.

Sean finally, nervously, looks up. “I don’t want to be Isabel, papi.” He swivels his head to Karen. “Isibéal.” The Irish name comes out a little twisted, always harder to pronounce, voice always sounding different than his mother’s.

“Those are girl names,” he mumbles.

“Well, what else are we supposed to call you?” Karen asks. 

Sean looks away from them, not even pretending to poke at his pasta anymore. “I dunno, just not that.” 

“Have you been thinking of other names, _mi hijo?_ ” his dad asks, small smile growing when Sean’s head snaps around at the pet name. 

“ _Hijo?_ ” Sean beams so brightly that his little face almost can’t contain it.

“Well that sounds like a silly name. We can’t have everyone calling you ‘Son’ when you’re only mine, no?” Esteban teases him. He looks over to Karen to rope her in. She just gives him a light snort while absently stroking over her pregnant belly.

Sean’s laugh tinkles out of his mouth like a bell. “Papito, that’s not what I meant!”

“You know,” Karen starts, “When we found out we were having a girl, I wanted to name you Siobhán. But there’s no Spanish name like it and we thought it might be hard for Esteban’s family.” 

Sean scowls. “But, that’s—”

His dad interrupts him, “Sean!” 

He reaches over the table to clasp a warm, strong hand around Sean’s shoulder. “What do you think?”

“Sean,” the young boy says slowly, rolling the word around his mouth, his first taste of something better than he knew ever existed.

Karen lets out an almost silent sigh, prompting Esteban to look over at her. “It’s a purely Irish name and everything,” he says quietly.

Sean leans forward excitedly, catching their attention. “But do I look like a Sean?” 

They both smile at him, but something in Karen’s smile makes his stomach twinge uncomfortably. Sean instead focuses on Esteban, whose wide smile lights up the entire room. 

His dad ruffles his hair, and then slows to gently run his fingers through it. “You look like a Super Sean.” 

“Mommy?” he asks her, trying to draw something, anything, out.

“Yeah, baby,” she says, still absently rubbing her stomach and staring out at nothing. “You do.”  
  
  
  


###### 

## December

Sean leans back against the tree as he holds Daniel in his lap, legs crossed and cradling him as close as possible to provide more warmth than what the small fire in front of them puts out. He cleared away the snow underneath them and laid out the sleeping bag, but it doesn’t stop the chill emanating up from the ground. Daniel sleeps restlessly, waking up in coughing fits. Sean’s back aches, muscles throbbing from his shoulders down to his hips after carrying Daniel for miles. He knows he probably won’t sleep a wink tonight. 

Daniel coughs himself awake for the fifth time and Sean tries to hold him even closer, as if Daniel’s entire side wasn’t already completely clutched to Sean, from his head under Sean’s chin to his feet curled up to his knee. Daniel isn’t as quick to fall asleep again this time. Sean can feel a dampness on his collarbone from where Daniel’s face rests. He’s torn between giving Daniel his privacy and needing to comfort him. Sean wishes for their dad so painfully, so desperately, that the tears springing to his own eyes blur the fire into a swirling sketch of writhing shapes. But he can’t let them fall, not on Daniel’s head. 

“Do you want another story, enano?” Sean murmurs.

Daniel nods wordlessly into Sean’s jacket.

“Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, two wolf brothers lived on an amazing beach with their papa wolf…” Sean spills a story that lives in his dreams when the pain of missing his dad becomes too overwhelming—a world where they got to live in Puerto Lobos, the three of them all together, playing in the ocean and eating the best food they’ve ever had. 

A couple tears escape and roll down Sean’s cheek, but he roughly wipes them into his shoulder. 

“One day, they went out swimming and they swam too far, out where the papa wolf told them not to go. A shark jumped out and tried to attack them. That's when the big brother discovered that the little one was not an ordinary wolf, but a _superwolf_. And he saved them…”

“The little one always saves the day,” Sean whispers into Daniel’s hair. “ _Nuestro guerrerito._ ” 

He remembers his dad holding him in a similar manner at the children’s hospital before his very first appointment, as his anxiety shook him apart. 

_You are so brave, mi guerrerito,_ he told Sean. Over and over. 

“Our brave superwolf,” Sean tells Daniel now.

  


* * *

  


Claire opens the door and stares at them without a hint of recognition in her eyes. “Yes?” she asks, with disdainfully furrowed brows.

“Hi, Claire,” Sean says. 

She squints at them harder as the muscles around her mouth tighten. “Do I know you?” 

“It’s us, Grandma,” Daniel pipes up, his excitement rankling through the awkward tension. “Daniel, and Sean!”

Claire’s eyes widen in shock, but the frigidness that drops from her expression when she looks at his brother only makes Sean feel even more edgy. 

“Daniel? Oh my...” She hesitates when she turns to Sean. “And is this… Sean?”

Stephen comes to the door, mirroring Claire and staring at Sean with a completely foreign look. Blessedly, Daniel starts coughing before Sean has to figure out what to say and they are quickly ushered inside.

  


* * *

  


Things are awkward in Claire and Stephen’s home. Sean feels as if a cloud of uncomfortableness follows him into every room. He tries to stay out of the way most of the time. They clearly don’t know what to say to him, after hearing as much of the story as Sean would tell them, and primarily dote on Daniel instead. It hardens like a rock in the pit of his stomach, an emotion too close to jealousy for his comfort, but Sean knows it’s better this way.

So he does their chores and he sketches, doesn’t complain or resist when Daniel asks Sean to play with him, and they get by. Claire and Stephen have not once said his name in the entire week they’ve been there and they stumble over pronouns in the very few times they address him while talking to Daniel. The strenuous effort they put into bending and swerving around the subject becomes so obvious that even Daniel notices, and he starts throwing confused glances at Sean. 

One night, Sean is reading up in their bedroom as Daniel practices his powers on building castles out of the blocks on the floor. 

“Why do Grandma and Grandpa act so weird around you?” Daniel asks, a lightness in his tone that is belied by how he stays focused on the blocks and doesn’t look at Sean. 

Sean sighs, not wanting to answer even though the hurt and frustration has been solidly building up inside of him without any outlet to escape. “I think… they probably still think of me as Isabel.”

“Who?” Daniel lets his hand fall and finally looks at Sean, curiosity outweighing awkwardness. 

“You know, Daniel. My name wasn’t Sean when I was born.” 

“Oh, right. I forgot,” Daniel says, so wonderfully innocent to Sean’s ears, like a balm to everything that’s hurting inside. “Yeah, but still… it’s not you.” 

“Well, they’re like really religious, you know? They don’t believe in all this stuff.” 

Daniel frowns. “But that doesn’t make any sense.” 

“I know, man. It doesn’t make sense to me either.” Sean shrugs, aiming for nonchalance while biting painfully on the inside of his lip. 

Daniel just sits there, eyes flicking between Sean and his half finished block structure. 

“C’mon,” Sean says, standing up to take his jeans off and put shorts on, instead. “It’s getting late and I’m ready for bed.” 

“Yeah, alright.” Daniel follows his lead, and then grabs a comic book before crawling up the bed. “But, can you leave the light on a little longer, so I can read some of my comic first?”

“Sure, go for it.” Sean rests his arm over his eyes to block out the light, not because he’s actually tired, but it’s the closest he can get to blocking out the world and the suffocating air of this shitty place.

A few minutes later, Claire knocks on their door. 

“Hey,” she says while coming over to sit at the end of the bed by Daniel’s feet, “I wanted to see if you two would pray with me before I say goodnight.” 

Claire hasn’t come in every single night— _thankfully_ , Sean thinks darkly—but just like the first night, he refuses as politely as he can. It doesn’t seem to surprise Claire in the slightest, as she’d only been holding one hand out towards Daniel. 

But, Sean feels just as surprised as Claire looks when Daniel doesn’t lean forward to join her, like he had every time previously. 

“No thank you, Grandma. I’m good,” Daniel says. 

“What? But, why not?” 

“Because I don’t want to pray anymore.” 

A thrum of nervous anxiety slithers through Sean. Daniel had been perfectly content to listen to Claire and go along with her praying up until now, after Sean had just blamed the tension between them on her religious ideas. 

“But, I don’t understand,” she continues, a hint of frustration coloring the confusion in her voice.

“Well, if _Sean_ doesn’t want to then I don’t want to either,” Daniel says. 

Claire’s eyes narrow onto Sean. “What did you say to him?” 

“ _What_?” Sean snaps, shocked with a humorless laugh. “I didn’t do anything.” 

“Well you must have,” she accuses. “He was fine before tonight.”

“Sean didn’t say anything, I decided,” Daniel says defensively. 

“Maybe you should go pray with Stephen.” Sean meets her glare with a matching one of his own. 

Claire huffs and stands up. “Goodnight, _Daniel_ ,” she says as she strides out of the room. 

Sean lays back down again and throws both of his arms over his face this time, trying to cover more than just his eyes. 

“I’m sorry, Sean,” Daniel mumbles.

“No, you’ve got nothing to be sorry for, enano.” 

“Okay.” Sean feels Daniel flop down next to him, jostling the bed and some of the light leaks back in. 

Sean isn’t ready to face it. “Is it okay if I turn the lamp off now?” he asks Daniel. 

“Yeah, I think I’m tired now.” 

He lets his arms rest down by his sides after he’s reached over to turn the light out. Daniel turns on his side to face him, putting his hand in the crook of Sean’s elbow.

“Night, Sean.” 

Sean closes his eyes and lets himself sink into the mattress, feeling a little safer in the bubble around just the two of them.

  


* * *

  


It’s more than just a breath of fresh air, it feels like Sean’s entire body is finally pulled up from the depths he’d been drowning in when he and Daniel meet Chris, and then Charles. Finally, two new strangers that he gets to introduce himself to as _himself_ , without the weights he’s been dragging around since they got to Beaver Creek.

As close to normality he can get, while also struggling with how to handle the bad feeling he has about Charles. But finally, it’s something outside of his own head to worry about. 

Unfortunately, it spirals very quickly back down after they get home from the Christmas market. 

Sean lets Daniel break the door open to Karen’s room with his powers— _who gives a fuck, anymore_. He’s tired of fighting with Daniel on it. He can’t make Daniel understand how useless of an endeavor it is and how much Karen doesn’t deserve his interest in her. 

But, another part of Sean is bitterly, disgustingly jealous. He knows, without a doubt, that if Karen were here, she would be just like her parents. Sean would be drowning underwater without a lifevest again, while Daniel would be pulled out and she would sail them far away from him. 

Sean feels numb as he goes about Karen’s old room. His curiosity in her feels distant and fabricated, just a secondhand impression from Daniel’s voracious search for answers. It’s only after he finds her letter that some of the twisted mess of confusing emotions slip back in through the cracks.

 _’Please help my children…’_  
_’I beg you, please… help my kids’_

“Fucking bullshit,” Sean grinds out through his teeth.

“She cares about us!” Daniel keeps trying to argue.

Sean locks his jaw against the first words that bite into his tongue, trying his hardest not to lash out even further at Daniel for something he doesn’t understand. 

_Maybe she cares about **you**_.

Then Claire and Stephen get home, and all of Sean’s defenses come crumbling down. Strength that Sean had been trying his absolute hardest to build into a wall, cut through like it’s paper thin.

“It’s time you learned to respect some rules.” Claire’s voice twists uglily. “I know Esteban let a lot of things slide and let you do whatever you wanted after my daughter left. She was the one who had the level head in your family, and I’m sorry that she left, I wish she never did. But she clearly must have had her reasons.” 

She glares deeply into Sean’s eyes, pushing her meaning through like a dagger.

Sean’s heart pounds wildly in his chest as his lungs heave harder. These words that have always lived deep down in the darkest corners of his mind, where his dad had repeatedly kicked the door down inside to pick him up and brush the pain off as well as he could; _no hijo, no. I promise, you are not why she left. She had her reasons, I will never understand why, but you are not it;_ rocking Sean in his hugs; _you are perfect;_ always hugging him so, so tightly; _te quiero, mijo._

“We have rules and we have _limits_ , Isa—” 

“His name is _**Sean**_ ,” Daniel shouts at Claire. A couple knick-knacks on the shelves rattle and the boxes shake behind her. 

It’s the loud threat of destruction that shoves Sean out of the attack he was spiraling down into. He locks those thoughts back in his mind, behind that weakened door with broken hinges. No one left to fix it, no one to pick him back up again. His own hands can only do so much, and the only thing that matters anymore is carrying Daniel to safety. 

Sean pulls Daniel behind him, shielding him at an angle and holding onto Daniel’s right wrist to prevent him from putting it up. 

“We’ve put up with a lot, put up with all of your blasphemy—”

Sean interrupts her loudly, voice shaking in anger, “It’s not my fault.” 

“That may be what you think, but _we know_ —”

Claire is cut off this time by Stephen’s pained shouting downstairs. 

After lifting the cupboard off of Stephen, Daniel lists sideways and Sean catches him in his arms. He holds Daniel tightly, defensively, fearfully, as the panic inside him ratchets higher with the police pounding on the door. 

“I didn’t.” Claire looks up at them, her eyes rounding wider than her glasses. “We… we didn’t call them.” 

Sean winces, her words hitting him mournfully, always too late. “I know.” 

After they say their rushed goodbyes and are pushed out the back, he runs away with Claire’s voice still ringing in his head. _Watch out for your brother, Sean._

_All of your blasphemy._  
_Isa—_  
_Sean…_

“Sean!” Daniel grabs his arm and points down at the train in the distance.

He drowns her words out with the sound of the thundering tracks, piercing whistle, and thrumming of Daniel’s energy next to him. 

Daniel’s safe haven is gone and ruined, and a close friendship broken too quickly. But for Sean, Beaver Creek was plowed over and left to stay behind him eight years ago. If Sean could somehow reconcile both of those things to keep Daniel safe, give Beaver Creek what it wanted from him, he tries to believe that he’d be able to.  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Mentiroso:_ Liar  
>  _Nuestro guerrerito:_ Our little warrior
> 
>  **Chapter content warnings:** conversations about name changes and deadnames, anxiety and panic attacks, transphobic grandparents. Beyond referring to deadnames, there is no misgendering of any kind in this fic. Other warnings to be added with later chapters.
> 
> [Me Gustas Tu - Manu Chao,](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rs6Y4kZ8qtw) the most cheesy Esteban song ever, and what I listened to the most while writing this story.
> 
> The hospital/clinic that Sean talks about is the [Seattle Children’s Hospital - Gender Clinic,](https://www.seattlechildrens.org/clinics/gender-clinic/) seemingly one of the best programs in the country. 
> 
> The scene where Sean is holding Daniel in his lap by the fire is inspired by this fucking amazing [fanart by ladyofthecreeddraws](https://ladyofthecreeddraws.tumblr.com/post/186055544475/this-just-in-life-is-strange-2-continues-to-hurt) on tumblr - I couldn’t get this scene out of my head the moment I saw it.
> 
> The next part is almost finished and will be up soon - where Finn and the gang come in, diverging from canon events so this becomes a trans character + no heist AU, and a higher archive rating :)
> 
> ♡ Thanks for reading ♡  
> 


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